difficulty in filling
out my chest measurement. Your boy shows such general intelligence that
I have no doubt he will have sense enough to pursue a regimen that will
make him sufficiently enlarge his chest measurement, so I am going to
waive the objection and let him in." She had not expected so quick a
decision in her favor, and was taken back a little. She hesitated a
minute, and then, with an angelic smile, she said to me, "Mr. Secretary,
you are not nearly so fat as they say you are."

Then I had another experience. A lady in Washington, whose husband had
some political influence, came and labored with me for six weeks or more
to appoint her son to a position. She secured the aid of Senators and
Congressmen in formidable number and came with them to see that they
spoke with emphasis. The place was one requiring technical
qualification, and following the recommendation of the head of the
Bureau, I appointed somebody else. I then received a letter from the
mother, saying that I was most ungrateful, since I declined to make her
a happy woman as I could have done by a turn of my hand. She complained
further that she had labored with her state delegation and got all the
votes for an administration bill in which I was especially interested
and this was the way I had rewarded her.

When you get a letter like that, the first thing you do is to think how
you can be severe with a person who has committed an impropriety, or
even been a little impertinent. Then you may compose an answer. Then if
you are wise, you will put the letter in a drawer and lock the drawer.
Take it out in the course of two days--such communications will always
bear two days' delay in answering--and when you take it out after that
interval, you will not send it. That is just the course I took. After
that, I sat down and wrote her just as polite a letter as I could,
telling her I realized a mother's disappointment under such
circumstances, but that really the appointment was not left to my mere
personal preference, that I had to select a man with technical
qualifications, and had, therefore, to follow the recommendation of the
head of the Bureau. I expressed the hope that her son would go on to
accomplish what she had hoped for him in the position which he then had.
That mollified her and she wrote me a note saying she was sorry she had
written as she had.

But the appointment I sent in was not confirmed at once and after an
interval I received a lett